Senor Parrot's Perch

Like many others, I’m sorry to see PBS‘ long running show, Reading Rainbow, leave the air. From what I heard on NPR as I drove in to work today, the funding decision rested on the choice to give reading mechanics a higher priority than actually reading something engaging and interesting.

The two go hand in hand, I think. Moreover, with out general knowledge, reading is difficult to impossible for kids to comprehend as they grow older and more advanced books have the tacit assumption that readers know something of the environment in which the book is set, whether it’s literature, history, or science. Starting early, reading the best books, as promoted on Reading Rainbow, is an excellent way to build that foundational knowledge that our kids need.

Levar Burton - Host of Reading Rainbow for 25 Years

There’s a growing perception that the focus on educating kids who aren’t up to speed, such as we have with No Child Left Behind, is reducing the opportunity for better readers, and better students in general, with a distinct disadvantage in the world marketplace.

This is probably true. School’s a breeze and they’re unchallenged. Until they’re challenged to perform.

Sometimes a kid just thrives intellectually, regardless of the level or quality of instruction. Most thrive best with a challenge and high expectations. We’re losing that environment and losing Reading Rainbow is more evidence.

Levar, sorry it had to end this way. You did an outstanding job for all those years and you deserve our thanks for all you’ve done for the kids all across this country. Thanks, and hope to see something else great, soon.

Last night I read The Velveteen Rabbit of How Toys Become Real to my youngest, age 6, for the first time. We sat on the floor, leaned up against her bed. As I neared the end, I glance at her and caught her wiping tears from her eyes. I had just read the part where Rabbit had wriggled to the top of the sack and shed a tear of her own that rolled from her eye to the ground. From that tear a beautiful flower sprang up and the nursery magic fairy appeared as the flower opened its petals.

This was the second time she’s cried at a story. The first was when I read her Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl. After reading that story, she asked me, “Why did you read me that story? It’s so sad.” I asked her if she liked it, and she nodded her head, “But it’s so sad.”

I have only generally read funny stories to her. So far she resists adventures, except the Jewel Fairy Series. She loves to laugh, and I really don’t quite see the reason she shows interest in the Jewel Fairy books, but then I’m a guy, and some girlish things always are a bit on the revolting side for most guys. It goes both ways, I’m sure.

After finishing The Velveteen Rabbit, I asked her how she liked the book. “I liked it. It started kinda boring, but it got good.”

She was right.

But in that boring part are held all the bricks and mortar for the sadness and tears at the end. Christmas morning, played with for two hours then forgotten; tossed in with old toys, flashy toys, also forgotten, and living a life of their own, with their own yearnings and their own faults.

THERE was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy’s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.

Some of words are hard for a six-year old, and some impossible,but they hold the magic. Would your publisher keep the word “charming?” No, they’d say a child wouldn’t know charming, unless it’s a prince.  It will have to be “cute.” Couldn’t we substitute “adorable?” Yes, but charming is the word, charming is the magic.

That boring part is like the plane ride to Disneyland. Disneyland is where it all happens, but nothing happens without the boring plane ride. Many great stories are like that, think of Chekhov, but the tendency is to want to get there all at once. This can make stories confusing to kids and it can make the stories more contrived as the author strives to add the missing bits along the way. So often, they just don’t create that magic. They lack what is charming.